Iowa Cold Cases says that the last time anyone saw Johnny Gosch was September 5, 1982. It was the very first thing that Sunday morning — at the crack of dawn — when the 12-year-old from West Des Moines, Iowa, headed out to deliver newspapers to the 37 houses on his paper route. He never made a single delivery, and he was never seen again.
It was unusual for Johnny to head out on his own, and he hadn’t been entirely alone: He’d taken the family dog with him. Dachshund Gretchen found her way home without him, though, and her solo reappearance was just one of the early signs that something was dreadfully wrong. He was normally accompanied by his father, John, and there’s no way to tell why things changed that day. Parents John and Noreen became suspicious when Gretchen returned alone and then, at 7:45 am, one of their son’s paper route customers called to ask where their paper was. They knew something was definitely, dreadfully wrong. John later said, “We went searching and found his little red wagon.” Of Johnny, there was no trace.
The police were notified about 45 minutes later and started out by heading out into the neighborhood and going from door to door. They were looking for anyone who had seen Johnny, or who had seen anything suspicious that morning. Unfamiliar cars, people hanging around where they shouldn’t have been … but they came up completely empty.
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